Data Consulting Leader Fosters Collaborative Work Environment for Remote Employees with Simple, Scalable VDI Andre Plante IT Manager Sponsored by: About Pythian Group •  Recognized Leader: •  Global industry leader in remote database administration services and consulting for Oracle, Oracle Applications, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server •  Work with over 250 multinational companies such as Forbes.com, Fox Sports, Nordion and American Apparel to help manage their complex IT deployments •  Expertise: •  One of the world’s largest concentrations of dedicated, full-time DBA expertise. Employ 9 Oracle ACEs/ACE Directors. •  Hold 7 Specializations under Oracle Platinum Partner program, including Oracle Exadata, Oracle GoldenGate & Oracle RAC •  Global Reach & Scalability: •  Around the clock global remote support for DBA and consulting, systems administration, special projects or emergency response WW HQ: Ottawa Offices: New York, San Francisco, London, Hyderabad, Sydney About Me •  Windows focus •  Started with Windows 3.1 through Windows 2008 Server •  Also worked on Solaris and various Linux systems, including RedHat, Ubuntu, Oracle Linux and CentOS •  Virtualization •  VMware ESX, VMware Horizon, Unidesk, Nutanix •  Network support •  Cisco, DNS, DHCP, AD, LDAP, NIS •  Second time with Pythian (close to 6 years total) •  Planned and implemented server and desktop virtualization About Our Sponsors •  Web-scale converged infrastructure innovation •  Consolidates compute and storage tiers into a single, integrated appliance •  Software-defined architecture enables VDI to scale from 50 desktops to thousands in linear fashion •  Flash cache ideally suited for VDI IOPS requirements •  Eliminates complexity, inflexible resource provisioning, and fragmented infrastructure management •  Supports VMware Horizon, Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft VDI on vSphere and Hyper-V •  Layering innovation •  Virtualizes above hypervisor to capture Windows OS, Apps, Personalization as virtual disk “layers” •  Desktops are provisioned and patched by assigning layers – all appear locally installed •  Imageless Management™ eliminates gold image sprawl, app virtualization issues •  Enables desktop people to manage VDI •  Replaces Linked Clones, Composer, Mirage, App Volumes, ThinApp, Persona, Immidio in VMware Horizon VDI with one simple console •  Also supports Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft VDI on vSphere and Hyper-V Why VDI 1.  Freedom •  Most employees are on call 24x7 with very tight response times. We wanted to give them more flexibility to be able to respond to issues without being chained to their desks. 2.  Security •  More and more of our clients are asking for better and better internal security of our systems. VDI allows us to control desktop security better. 3.  Collaboration •  Culture is everyone works together to solve complex problems and develop innovative solutions for our clients. They need to do it from the office or their home - anywhere in the world. VDI Today •  ~200 Unidesk desktops in production •  All persistent to meet consultants’ needs for personalization •  40 apps delivered as Unidesk layers •  1 Win 7 OS layer used by all desktops •  Nutanix 3-node system •  1 vCPU and 3GB of RAM standard desktop config •  VMware Horizon 6 for connectivity Why Nutanix 1.  2.  3.  4.  Storage/CPU convergence Scalability Power management Flexibility to add nodes as needed Why Unidesk 1.  Simplicity •  One console enables day-to-day management by desktop team 2.  Application layering •  Easily create apps and deploy just the ones we need to each user •  No interoperability issues or special combinations of layers (stacks) 3.  One OS layer •  Easy patching, just like apps •  Imageless – no image sprawl 4.  Persistent desktops •  Consultants are ultimate knowledge workers – need all customizations to “stick” Challenges We Are Working Through 1.  Getting people to recognize the differences between the physical desktop and the virtual desktop. You all can’t have 4 vCPU and 8GB of RAM each! 2.  Video conferencing. We have deployed many of the Dell Wyse P25 terminals with the PCoIP chipset, but the VMware RTAV (realtime audio/video driver) does not support these terminals. 3.  VPN. Many VDI users use soft VPN clients (Juniper Junos, Cisco AnyConnect, etc.) to connect to their clients. Many of these VPNs do not have split tunneling enabled, leaving us with workarounds for connectivity. Benefits 1.  Better security on our internal system. 2.  Better access to the internal infrastructure from any location 3.  Performance exceeds what they were experiencing using VPN to connect to our network 4.  Rapid app delivery, literally minutes to deploy 5.  Speedy provisioning 6.  Break/fix Lessons Learned 1.  Test and test more •  •  We started with a POC of about 30 users on our current infrastructure, and ran it for about 5-6 months. This gave us time to become familiar with the products, the environment and the ways of resolving the various issues. 2.  Include users from all functional and geographic areas in the POC to ensure it works as expected Live Demo Q&A and Next Steps Connect with Andre Plante http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/andre-plante/3/343/2a3/en Learn More About Demo: www.nutanix.com/demo-request Resources: www.nutanix.com/resources Contact: David @ [email protected] Learn More About Demo: get.unidesk.com/demo Trial: get.unidesk.com/trial Contact: Rob @ [email protected] New! Nutanix / Unidesk VDI Case Study International Car Rental Firm 500 Users, 100 Apps, 3 Countries www.unidesk.com/customers/auto-europe